Concrete grinding refers to a method that uses a machine equipped with metal bond diamonds for grinding the concrete floor, beginning with a lower grit diamond and working toward higher grit diamond to smooth and tighten the concrete floor.
Concrete polishing continues from the last highest grit metal bond diamond that was used and involves tooling made from resin bond diamonds. The difference between metal and resin bond tooling is that the diamonds in the metal bond are held together in a matrix composed of an assortment of metal elements such as copper, tin, iron, etc and diamonds in the resin bond are held together in a matrix composed of resin material. Concrete polishing is a process by which the floor is honed from a low grit to as high a grit as desired to produce an extremely smooth floor that if so desired can shine like a mirror as higher resin diamond grits are used.
The burnishing process utilizes burnishing pads that for the most part help remove wax or other similar chemicals from a floor using a stripping pad or similar pad and in turn reapply the wax or other chemicals using a variety of burnishing pads, by melting the material into the floor using a burnishing pad that rotates at high speed thereby creating heat and melting and driving the material into the tiny pores of the concrete floor. Burnishing pads are also available with various diamond grits impregnated into the pad which at times can remove some of the resin bond diamond polishing process or bring back to life a polished concrete floor that has lost its shine.